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Course Overview
ConsultingLab is a combination actual consulting engagement, research project, and lab where we encourage you to try new approaches and techniques to successfully complete a real consulting engagement. We do real projects for real clients who expect real outcomes. The course will help anyone interested in a consulting career acquire new skills in everything from scoping, to asking high-value, incisive questions, to building strong, long-term client relationships. It may also help you decide if consulting is, in fact, a good career choice for you (it’s not for everyone).
Since it's a combination course and lab, we focus on how to move through the stages of a consulting engagement, on how to apply a methodology that we’ve developed inside ConsultingLab (called, appropriately enough, “The ConsultingLab Way”) to help you approach and manage engagements, on both the practical skills and the unwritten, “soft” skills that are the foundation of a successful consulting career, and on exploring approaches, techniques, and ideas (that's the "lab" part). We also research best practices in consulting, to help build a knowledgebase that you can use throughout your career.
For more information check out the most current syllabus, wander around this website, or email Professor Labash: clabash@cmu.edu. ConsultingLab is open to students across the University, at both the graduate and undergraduate level. ConsultingLab is only offered in the Spring Semester Mini 4.
Course Content
Since ConsultingLab is an actual course we help students learn how to actually consult. We've divided the consulting process into six phases to make it easier to focus on the successful behaviors that are part of each.
Winning. While it's unlikely that a new consultant will immediately be put on a new business pitch (except at smaller firms) it's important to know how the process works. We address how to interpret and respond to RFPs, team organization and dynamics, and what makes for a successful new business pitch.
Starting. How you start can have a profound impact on how -- or whether -- you finish on time, on budget, and delivering the agreed-to final outcome. We cover project scoping, requirements definition, listening and questioning skills, building trust, and setting expectations.
Maintaining. Once the engagement is underway, it's critical to know how to manage the team, the project, and the client. We look at best practices in each area, as well as meeting leadership and how to write effective Conference Reports.
Fixing. Anyone who thinks that a consulting engagement is smooth sailing start-to-finish has never been in consulting. Or lived in reality, for that matter. We talk about how to prevent problems as best as possible, how to best deal with them as they inevitably come up, and how to set up and religiously follow a Change Management System.
Ending. Finishing the engagement entails completing some very specific steps. Using a very specific checklist, we cover how to make sure that all unresolved issues are resolved, that the expected deliverables are delivered, that documentation is complete, that a handoff meeting (when required) is done, that we say thank you, and we have a plan to stay on the client's radar.
Learning. Ending the engagement isn't the last thing you do. Learning from the engagement is, so that you can apply those lessons to the next one (and, not incidentally, to other areas of your life). We borrow the US Army's approach and do an After-Action Review internally and with the client to learn how to be better. We also apply the lessons about being a Learning Organization that Peter Senge discusses in his book, The Fifth Discipline, to make ConsultingLab better.
A few other things we cover:
The Professional Professional. Professionalism is "price-of-entry" in any consulting organization and engagement. Consultants (good ones, anyway) are expected to set the tone of the engagement and behave in a mature, respectful, and exemplary manner. We help student consultants learn and adopt professional behaviors, based on research and other evidence from the field.
Leading Leaders. As you become increasingly senior in any consulting firm, the likelihood increases of your interacting with and being looked to for counsel by leaders within the client organization. We cover how you, a leader in your own organization, can respectfully lead someone at your level or higher (sometimes much higher) in a client organization.
The ConsultingLab Way. Think of it as the Tao of Consulting. Over the years we've developed, refined, added, cut, and massaged various parts of our problem-solving and engagement-management approach. This is what we teach, to help you be a better consultant on your current engagement, and a better problem-solver in general. McKinsey has 7S, Deloitte has Deep Dive, we have this.
Course Assets
Assets not specific to each semester's course can be found here. All are available to students, some are available to everyone.
ConsultingLab Library Portal Link
Designed by CMU Librarian Sarah Young for ConsultingLab, the portal gives you access and guides you to databases and information sources that will help you in your engagement. You will need your Carnegie Mellon credentials to access.
One of the first things you need to do on your project is to schedule a kickoff meeting with your client. In advance of that you should put together a pdf with information about who the team is. This is an example of one of the better ones that a ConsultingLab team has produced.
Distance Communication Fieldbook
Written during the height of Covid, the Fieldbook gives you essential information -- and worksheets -- that will help you make virtual communication more effective, efficient, and professional.
How to do (good) research (and why it matters)
Very few people know how to do real research, and yet this is now an essential skill, as we move into an increasingly evidence-free world. Written by Professor Labash and three of his PhD-student Teaching Assistants, this small book will help you learn how to go beyond the first page of Google results, and find actual evidence.
Lab Notes
The template used for your weekly observations about what is working well or not, what's innovative, and what's a waste of time as you work on your project.
Labash Evidence Hierarchy User Guide
The lack of evidence-based decisions that are being made in the world right now is an existential threat. This hierarchy helps you tell the difference between facts, unvetted information, opinion, misinformation, disinformation, bullshit, and lies.
Presentation Design Canvas & User Guide
A development tool that Professor Labash created to help you prepare, produce, and present your work. Helpful for Mid-Point Reviews and Final Presentations, but applicable to any presentation, anytime, anywhere.
A small summary that Professor Labash wrote to help you better understand Professor Robert Cialdini's six Principles of Persuasion.
The document that prospective clients complete so that we have a basic understanding of their projects.
SAGE Campus gives you access to guided courses in everything from Fact-Checking Sources to Beginning and Advanced R. You will need your Carnegie Mellon credentials to access.
A tight scope is important for any project's success, but is essential for the seven-week project timeline in ConsultingLab.
The template used for your weekly Sprint Reports, communicating the status of your project.
Strategy Sprint User Guide
Professor Labash developed the Strategy Sprint for his StrategyLab Executive Education course as a way to use the sprint methodology popularized in Agile software development and apply it to efficient stratgy development. Useful for client projects where developing strategy quickly but thoughtfully is essential.
Team Design Canvas & User Guide
A development tool that Professor Labash created to help teams form, develop trust, and operate effectively and efficiently. And enjoy working together.
uLab Design Model & User Guide
Professor Labash developed the uLab Model for his Innovation + Technology course. Born out of scholarship on idea advancement and combined with his experience as a former advertising creative director whose job was literally to advance (or kill) ideas, the uLab Model is an instrument to get ideas past the idea stage.
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